The whole idea behind the Dingle-Drive was to get two distinct fixed gear ratios, one for pavement and one for gravel roads, but without the hassle of completely removing the rear wheel, flipping it around and reinstalling it. Coupled with a desire to run fatter tires than my dedicated road fixed-gear bikes can manage, that led to choosing this vintage Raleigh Competition. What remained untested, for me, was just how well this would work in reality.
Saturday I rode first to the central business district of scenic blink-and-you'll-miss-it Hodges, SC, where I took a couple of photos of De Selby in my usual photographing-vintage-bikes-in-Hodges spot, before retracing my route a couple of hundred yards to the start of Ross Road. I dismounted, opened the quick release and nudged the rear wheel forward in the dropouts and moved the chain from the 44T chainring and the 17T rear cog to the 42x19T combination, slid the wheel back to tighten up the chain, centered everything and snugged it back down. Less than a minute the very first time, and with practice perhaps a 20-second operation. I thought back to what it was like to flip my rear wheel around to go from 70 to 63 gear-inches on my Mercian and concluded this was a very nice improvement. But how did it RIDE?
Superbly. The combination of 35 mm cyclocross tires and a 60-in fixed gear with the long wheelbase and general springiness of the Raleigh Competition frame was perhaps the best feeling, handling, riding bike I've ever taken on an unpaved road. It was almost like Raleigh's designers meant for it to be used this way, and why they didn't sell them set up like this from the beginning eludes me. I mean, perfect. It didn't hurt that this was my first time riding Ross Road from the Hodges end, and that I realized something that should have been obvious - in this direction, it's mostly downhill! The gear was low enough that when it was time to climb, it was manageable on gravel and I never felt like I was about to stall out, high enough that I could manage the descents without feeling spun out and still have that extra sense of connection to the road that fixed gives.
I switched back to the 70-in when I reached pavement and headed out for Klugh Road, which includes a particularly nasty, spike-like climb up to the rough intersection of Johns Creek and Dungannon roads. The former was my route again today, and I switched back to the 60-in again, making a slightly faster gear change this time before tackling its dirt and loose stone. The 60-in is just enough lower than the 63 I used to use for this work to be comfy and cushy - for a fixed-gear on a dirt road. Anyway, I liked how I was simultaneously aware of how nice the bike is while feeling it flow into that natural state of, "c'est un velo/it's a bike" casualness. On past a lovely old farm house, then reaching pavement again and returning to the 70-in for the ride home.
The climb up Deadfall Road might have been a touch slower than it would have been on my Gitane TdF fixed-gear with its lighter 28 mm tires, but not by enough to really matter, and I had a lovely 19 miles of mixed roads under my belt and the knowledge that this crazy thing actually WORKS the way it's intended to. Now to find a freewheel I like for the other side of the hub ...